A Fight Within: Women and Dalits in India’s Farmers’ Movement
Progressives widely lauded the Indian farmers’ protests for incorporating women and Dalits. But a closer look points to the endurance of casteism and patriarchy in the movement.
Through the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee (Committee for Struggle to Acquire Land), and other agricultural labor organizations, landless Dalits in various parts of Punjab have been asserting their right over the village commons. Image: VikalpSangam
The announcement of the repeal of the three farm laws was a thumping victory for the resilient year-long farmers’ movement, which faced state repression in the form of water cannons, lathi-charges, and wrongful arrests. Protestors also endured extreme weather changes sitting on the borders of the nation’s capital city Delhi and encountered false media and state propaganda which spread misinformation labeling them “anti-nationals” and “Khalistanis”. Against all of this, Modi’s non-apology to the farmers and protestors on the birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, was almost anti-climactic.
Of Slogans, Dupattas, and Banners
The Urdu poet of romance and rebellion, Majaz Lakhnawi, in his famous Naujawan Khatoon Se (Address to a Young Lady), instructed the young women of pre-partition India to do away with their aanchal (the piece of cloth covering their heads, a representation of women’s honour intertwined with familial control over their freedoms) and convert it into a banner (of protest/rebellion/resolve): “tire māthe pe ye āñchal bahut hī ḳhuub hai lekin tū is āñchal se ik parcham banā letī to achchhā thā” (the cloth covering your forehead is admirable, but it would have been better if you had used this cloth as a banner instead).
Carrying forward that legacy of women’s aanchal, or dupatta as it is commonly called in North India, the famous Punjabi singer and activist Jagraj Dhaula wrote, “Haray dupatte laah modheyaan tohn, Modi de gall paawan ge” (We will take these green dupattas off our shoulders, and tighten them around Modi’s neck.).While Majaz’s address to the young women was for them to break the shackles of patriarchy and step out of their homes to participate in the freedom movement, Jagraj’s composition is giving voice to the large number of women who participated in the farmers’ movement.
It was not the first time that women participated in a movement in significant numbers. Women have been an essential part of various militant struggles, including struggles by anganwadi and ASHA workers, sit-ins by teachers’ unions, and historic movements such as Telangana, Tebhaga, and Naxalbari.
However in this article, we closely unpack the participation of women in the farmers’ movement to understand their role in it. The farmers’ movement in India was led by at least forty kisan unions (peasant organizations), working primarily in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. Since it began, a large body of literature in the form of popular narratives and songs, newspaper articles, speeches by leaders, academic analyses, and even social media commentaries have emerged that have attempted to understand and comment on various aspects of the movement. Women’s participation in the movement was analyzed, celebrated, and valorized. From being seen as “equal stakeholders”, a “helping hand”, to being termed as a “spectacle to behold” and “managers of protest sites” – no metaphor was laid waste while describing women’s participation in the movement. There is no doubt that through various events in Punjab, and at the borders of Delhi, women’s political mobilization was significant – whether through organizing their own tractor march, holding the mahila kisan sansad, or even taking over management of the stage on International Working Women’s Day.
Women farmers attend a protest against the farm laws on International Women's Day on the Delhi-Haryana border. Image: Danish Siddiqui via Aljazeera.
But what happens to Jagraj Dhaula’s green dupatta – a weapon against this fascist government and still very much a symbol of women’s honour – when it goes back to the space of the family, village, and community? Did the participation of women in these protests, especially Dalit women, dent in any way the structures of patriarchy and casteism?
Kisani, Kranti, Aur Kaam (Agriculture, Revolution, and Work)
When the farmers’ movement began, another slogan, which resonated with people all over the world, was “No Farmers, No Food”. Admittedly, with a rise in the “organic foods” industry and an uptake in consumerist notions of “from farm to table”, it was a slogan that left no room for ambiguity, and was a true broad-based agenda slogan. However, this slogan does not take into account the stark realities of farmers’ hardships: a suicide pandemic, generations of indebtedness, and systems of exploitation.
The slogan also obscures the realities of exploitation of Dalit men and women laborers in the field. It obscures both their landlessness and the caste and patriarchal violence that they undergo routinely. In India, female farmers represent 75 percent of the female working class in rural areas, but they barely own 12.9 percent of the farmland. According to the India Human Development Survey, 83 percent of agricultural land is inherited by male members of the family and less than 2 percent by females.
“...majority of the women who participated in the farmers’ movement belonged to landholding families from dominant castes in Punjab and Haryana.”
Nonetheless, women did not only join the farmers’ protests but organized village level meetings and local tractor marches, and performed mourning songs (siyappa) for Modi from the very beginning. As the movement progressed, kisan unions made a strategic decision to march to Delhi. Women who joined the protests initially in Delhi were largely activists from various kisan unions and student activists from various universities in Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi. Gradually, women’s participation increased along with the tempo of music from artists of Punjab and Haryana. The kisan anthem indefatigably announced, “Assi saalan di bebe saadi, jaandi naare laiya” (our eighty year old grandmothers are here to sloganeer).
Women’s participation was depicted as a step towards emancipation, and claims were made that women had broken the shackles of patriarchy by joining such a large movement on the outskirts of Delhi. The tone and tenor of women’s representation reflected the strength of the challenge they posed to the patriarchal structures of society. However, does this participation alone confront the patriarchal structures of society and pave the way for women’s liberation?
Without a doubt, the reclaiming and occupation of public spaces by women is a hard-won battle, whether it was at Shaheen Bagh or at the farmers’ protests. The journey from private to public spaces is an itinerary of assertion and declaration of equal rights. But women in the farmers’ movement participated as members of households who own agricultural land. It was through their family’s inheritance, the inheritance of their fathers, sons, and grandsons that they articulated their participation in the movement. Thus, their participation was a consequence of fear of the landholding castes of Punjab, the fear of losing their land. It therefore becomes difficult to understand women’s participation as a collective ‘we’ because they themselves see their presence in the protests as concerned wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. For instance, Rajwinder Kaur, a woman in her mid-twenties from Khiyala village, pointed out, “I went to Tikri border where I cooked langar for farmers and felt that as I am also from a village and my father is a farmer, it is my duty to be part of this dharna, even though I am a lawyer now”. Another woman shared, “(Because of the bills) if our farming desolates and our financial state gets ruined, then our women will be the first one to be affected, our homes will come under poverty and our kids will be jobless”.
At the same time, the participation of Dalit women in the movement remained underwhelming despite the fact that they have an organic relation to agricultural land as agricultural laborers and depend on it for livelihood, as opposed to women whose family owns the land. Their minimal participation can be ascribed to the precarious nature of their relation with the landowning castes. They suffer from all forms of humiliation, including sexual violence while working on their fields or collecting fodder for their cattle, all of which went unaddressed in the course of the movement.
Dalit women protest to demand 33 percent of reserved village common land on annual lease in Sangrur, June 2020. Image: The Tribune
A Struggle Within a Struggle: Dalit Women in the Agricultural Domain
A predominant section of social media as well as the press spoke about women in the movement as a homogenous category, overlooking the power hierarchies within. They presumed unconditional and full participation of Dalit women in the protests without analyzing the underlying structures of caste and class that impact women and men in the rural political economy of the country. How much did Dalit women see themselves as stakeholders in the protests? A section of Dalit women did join the protests in Delhi, given the farm laws would have impacted their livelihood as well. But when asked why their numbers were limited, they quoted the discrimination, humiliation, and exploitation that they experience at the hands of the dominant castes. Most were convinced that the mere repeal of the farm laws would not mitigate or end their combined experiences of caste, class, and patriarchal exploitation.
“...when asked why their numbers were limited, they [Dalit women] quoted the discrimination, humiliation, and exploitation that they experience at the hands of the dominant castes.”
Their predominant struggle in Punjab for the past decade has been a struggle to acquire one-third of village common land (panchayati land) that is reserved for Dalits. The Punjab Village Common Land Regulation Act of 1961 reserves the right of Dalits to one-third of the common land that is auctioned every year. But each year, members of the dominant castes set up proxy buyers among Dalits and make it difficult for them to acquire land on lease. Under the aegis of the ZPSC, Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee (Committee for Struggle to Acquire Land), and many agricultural labor organizations, landless Dalits in various parts of Punjab have been struggling to assert their right over the village commons. Dalit women participate in large numbers in these protests. They have also waged struggles against the complicit administration, and occasionally won. The prominent struggles that came in the public domain were those in Jaloor, Matoi and Balad Kalan villages.
Ironically, these protests have never been seen or analyzed from the perspective of women’s issues, even when women were the main leaders of the protests. Instead of looking at the intersectionality of caste and gender, these protests were commonly viewed through the lens of only caste, despite the fact that sexual harassment is immanent in women’s experiences of exploitation. The struggle of Dalit women for land is a struggle for their livelihood as well as dignity, as their relation to land is not necessarily through their husbands or men of the household.
Dalit women in Punjab have also been at the forefront of struggles against microfinance companies. They borrow loans from these companies, which charge exorbitant interest rates (as much as 26% per annum), to run small businesses. The issue gained momentum during the COVID lockdowns when recovery agents threatened these women and their families for installments due. There was a drastic loss in their incomes due to the lockdown, as a result of which they failed to pay their EMIs (Equated Monthly Installments). The number of Dalit women bearing the burden of such loans was huge. Women from villages around Patiala, Mansa, Barnala, Sangrur, Moga and Bathinda of Punjab protested against these companies. Raj Kaur, a protester, said, “The matter is still sub-judice, however, the agents of these companies continue to harass us. How come the government can waive loans of big corporate houses and not of poor women”.
Women gathered at Mansa district of Punjab talking about the burden of micro-finance loans. Mansa is one of the worst impacted districts by microfinance debt. Image: Vivek Gupta via The Wire.
Thus overall, the farmers’ movement did not enable Dalit laborers to address their relation with land. But owing to how their livelihood is determined by it, Khet Mazdoor (Agricultural Labour) unions also felt impelled to participate in the protests. Their argument rested on the impact of the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020, one of the three farm laws, on poor Dalit communities. It sought to remove commodities like cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion, and potatoes from the list of essential commodities, which would have ended the imposition of stock-holding limits except under extraordinary circumstances. The subsequent rise in the prices of food grains would have then affected poor Dalit households the most, and this necessitated their participation. However, it remained scant due to their experiences of caste discrimination in the villages.
Discrimination along caste-class lines was most visible during the lockdowns in 2020, just before the farm ordinances were passed. There was a huge shortage of migrant labor, as they were forced to go back to their respective states due to COVID. This also restricted the seasonal movement of the migrant labor force into Punjab, which made local labor “costlier”. In order to keep the wages depressed, the landed peasantry in several villages resorted to coercive practices. They passed resolutions for fixing wage rates and threatened to socially boycott the local Dalit agricultural labor in case they disobeyed. Soon after, when the protests spread to the outskirts of Delhi in November 2020, calls of solidarity were sought from the members of Dalit communities. A sense of resentment against the dominant caste communities rooted in continued discrimination and exploitation of labor gravely affected the participation of Dalits. Though, through the efforts of many agricultural labor organizations (khet mazdoor unions), the Dalit population was mobilized and their participation was ensured in the protests.
Far From a Conclusion
In spite of the fractures and inequities within, this hard earned battle for the repeal of the farm laws has been exemplary because it rekindled hope in the masses that governments can be held accountable through mass mobilization. As any other social movement, the farmers’ movement engaged with various ideas, politics, practices, and communities, some of which stood in contradiction to each other. Activists and academicians should continue to analyze the nuances of the participation of various sections of the society, particularly women and low-caste groups. Without addressing these contradictions and fractures, which are very much real and ongoing, no rural emancipation in India is possible.
Monica Sabharwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Punjabi University, Patiala
Jatinder Singh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Punjabi University, Patiala.
The authors would also like to acknowledge the contribution of their beloved friend Shailza Sharma, whose input strengthened this piece.